


The Bodies

by whatdoyouthinkmyjobis



Series: Hunters on the Hellmouth [57]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Battle, Betrayal, Boss Fight, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Dead child, Emotional Manipulation, Emotionally heavy, Episode: s07e19 Empty Places, F/M, Injury, Original Character Death(s), Secrets, Serial Killers, Tears, omg no no no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-18 00:38:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14842253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatdoyouthinkmyjobis/pseuds/whatdoyouthinkmyjobis
Summary: The strange, murdering priest has been leaving presents -- bodies of the unfortunate people who hadn't left Sunnydale -- on Buffy's door step for weeks. Two new, eerily familiar bodies prompt everyone to take up arms.





	The Bodies

**Author's Note:**

> Based on events in BTVS 7.19 “Empty Places.”

Giles thought his heart would explode with happiness and turn to ash all at once. The smell of the ocean blew in through Buffy’s open window as they buzzed down the highway. The sun blazed above them turning the grass and water painfully bright.

When she’d asked to come with him to pick up a couple of Potentials in LA, Giles couldn’t suppress his smile. He’d taken the scenic route to give them more time together. Family time.

Despite all of his attempts at conversation, Buffy had been silent for the first hour.

“Would you like some music?” he asked.

She nodded.

Giles pushed a few buttons, but these rental cars always confused him, every company wanting to make their radio more distinct and impossible. Smiling faintly, Buffy leaned forward and pressed a button. The radio came to life with Led Zeppelin. Buffy punched the button so hard, it popped off.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “Maybe not music.”

He nodded, watching out of the corner of his eye as Buffy pulled her sweatshirt tighter and sank into the seat. “At least the damnable insurance will be used this time.”

Buffy reached out, taking his hand in hers. Giles wanted to slam on the brakes. To sit in this moment in the sun with his surprise daughter for maybe the last time and just enjoy life. He drove on, fingers entwined with Buffy’s.

After a few minutes, she sighed. “I don’t want to fake smile. I don’t want to lie. Not with you.”

He was happy to hear it, and gave her fingers a quick squeeze.

“But I can’t talk about it now.” She stared out at the highway ahead of them in silence.

As they entered city limits, still far from the airport, Buffy asked, “Would you wait for me?”

“Wait for you?”

“I was going to catch a bus from the airport. I, uh, need to see someone.”

Of course. This quiet trip hadn’t been about family time at all. She wanted to see Angel; for what purpose, Giles didn’t dare guess. “I am sure I can busy the Potentials with lunch.”

He glanced at her quickly, her shoulders slumped with the weight of the world, her eyes without spark. “Buffy, I hope seeing him helps.”

* * *

 

Karen swerved but still hit the pothole squarely, causing her old Neon to spit out her CD in protest. “Fine,” she sighed, tossing the disc in the passenger seat. She wasn’t in the mood for N*SYNC anymore. Not since she had hit Sunnydale.

Sunnydale was abandoned. Not a graffiti-riddled, broken glass, run down sort of abandoned. Rather a ghost town, like one of those stories about robots carrying on after a nuclear explosion. The sprinklers went off on the overgrown lawns. The lights were on in the abandoned stores. The traffic signals blinked between red and green, though no one was around to stop or go.

For years, her Watcher, Penny Seaward, had told her the Slayer was in prison. “Uncontrollable, that girl. Faith murdered a man in cold blood. Now we all must pay the price.” But Karen wasn’t going to sit back and let people get hurt because the Slayer was an idiot. After all, she was a Potential, so she had every right to keep San Francisco safe from vampires. In the last two years, she’d killed two dozen vampires and one demon all while balancing school and work.

Truth was, Karen often thought of herself as The Slayer.

Four days ago, she went out to patrol Golden Gate Park, where she ran into four…creatures. Manlike beings with their eyes branded shut, yet still able to see, dressed as monks and carrying curved daggers. She ran, got the drop on two of them and ran again. Her muscles were burning by the time she ran into a cute mounted police officer who was more than happy to give her a slightly surreal ride home.

After Officer Cutey McHorserider dropped her off at her apartment, she found a letter from her Watcher. “ _Karen, Run. Something old and evil has risen up, and it’s trying to wipe out the Slayer line. You need to get to Sunnydale. Buffy Summers is there. She can help you. I will try to distract these demons, then rejoin you in Sunnydale. Love always, Penny._ ”

The letter told her so little, yet spun her world upside down. Had the monsters in the park killed Penny? If Buffy Summers, the previous Slayer, was still alive, who was Faith? And how could Buffy, a rebel Slayer who’d shirked her duties to run off with her _vampire boyfriend_ possibly be of any help?

After a tense morning of driving, Karen finally pulled up in front of the small white bungalow. With its windows and doors covered in weird graffiti it was lively compared to the rest of the town. At least, it was loud enough inside that Karen had to knock a few times before a small girl with short curly hair framing her face opened the door.

“Buffy Summers?”

The girl scoffed like someone had just confused her for Sharon Osbourne. “God no. I’m Ju. Who are you?”

Karen peeked inside, where a tangle of girls stared back at her. Many were too young to be roommates, and they clearly weren’t related. They must be – “Karen Zhào. Potential.”

“Andrew! Dawn! We got another one!” Ju shouted back into the house. “Welcome to the lunatic asylum,” she grumbled before going back to the girls sitting on the living room floor.

Karen steeled herself and walked inside. Her fellow Potentials draped themselves across the floor as if sitting required an excruciating amount of energy. Every one of them had dark circles under their eyes and bruises on their arms. One girl held an icepack against her head.

A petite blonde in her early twenties, dressed in flares and a trendy slashed tee, trotted down the stairs. She looked like she ate worry for breakfast. “Giles didn’t bring you. Who are you?”

“Uh, Karen Zhào. I drove down –”

“You _drove_?!” she said with obvious delight.

“From San Francisco. My Watcher told me to get to Sunnydale because Buffy Summers was here, but I’m kind of confused because she had also told me Buffy died two years ago.”

“I’m Buffy, and she wasn’t lying,” the blonde replied, nonchalantly.

While Karen tried to process that this slip of person was the dead rebel Slayer, two tall, handsome men in their late twenties arrived with crates of apples and oranges.

“Eat up, girls!” cheered the shorter one. He smiled at Buffy while the Potentials mobbed the food.

He looked at Buffy with an adoring radiance undercut by pleading desperation. Buffy barely acknowledged him. Karen wasn’t sure if the man was in the doghouse, or if the doghouse would be an improvement.

“Fresh fruit?” Buffy said to the taller one. “Where’d you find that unicorn?”

“I’m resourceful,” replied the shorter one, smiling like he wasn’t being ignored.

“Hey! Hey! Bringers!” shouted a girl by the window.

In a flash, the whole crew flooded out of the front door. Across the street, four of those strange monks Karen had fought back home were – Oh God – they were dropping bodies on the sidewalk. Then in a flash of metal – _CRACK! SLASH! CRUNCH!_ – the Potentials killed three of the monks. The fourth ran down the street with a Potential in pursuit. _Thwack! Thwack!_ She landed two throwing stars in its back before it rounded the corner.

“Lara! Come back!” shouted an African girl who seemed a little older than the rest of the teenagers.

The Potential with the throwing stars, Lara, glared back at them, then up the street before slowly returning to the crowd.

A stone-faced girl with blue hair and a sweet-looking girl with large blue eyes pulled their blades from the bodies.

“You guys are pretty good,” Karen said. “I fought some of these guys the other day. Not easy.”

Blue Hair raised an eyebrow. “And you lived? At least you’re not green.”

“Mine were armed, too,” said Karen with a shrug. She wasn’t about to let any of these amateurs condescend to her. _But why weren’t these monks armed?_

Buffy and the two men pushed through the crowd. “Move or you’re helping with body duty!” snapped the shorter one. The crowd parted.

“We should go after them,” said Lara with a thick Russian accent. “How many have we killed these last two weeks?”

“We’ll discuss it later,” Buffy said. “First, the bodies.”

Under the scarred Bringer corpses lay two bodies. Both had their throats slit. A mother and her young daughter.

The shorter man drew a sharp breath at the sight of the two blonde bodies. “Jo?”

“Caleb,” corrected Buffy.

* * *

 

The first body had arrived two weeks prior, delivered at night by some vampires. It was a teenage boy. Throat cut, but no sign of a vampire bite. The next morning, Bringers brought an old woman in the same condition. They weren’t food; they were calling cards.

Through a combination of beating up vampires for information and the Winchester’s detective skills, they had learned that the priest who Cloé claimed had killed the girls at St. Agnes’ was Father Caleb Mitchum. Shockingly, he was a real priest. Less surprising, he’d been moved from parish to parish for over a decade, never lasting anywhere longer than a year.

After the first day, the Potentials, itching for a fight, started to pick off the messengers. They burned the Bringers’ bodies. The victims, they buried, which was more dignity than Caleb’s victims had gotten in the past.

Every town he’d moved to, girls went missing. Sometimes their bodies were discovered months later. Sometimes only pieces turned up. No suspect was ever named.

Without a word between them, Buffy and Dean had set off alone to bury the latest pair of bodies. She didn’t particularly want to be alone with Dean, but she needed her hands to help lay these victims to rest. Buffy tried to avoid thinking about the smallest body wrapped in a sheet in the trunk of the Impala, but she couldn’t stop seeing her anyway. Maybe two years old. A mop of golden curls. This was the first child Caleb had delivered, and Buffy suspected neither of the victims were local. He’d killed that woman for a reason.

“Who was Jo?” Buffy asked.

“Another hunter.” Dean white-knuckled the steering wheel.

“To you,” Buffy clarified. She knew that Jo back in Dean’s world had died. She was one of the names memorialized in a tattoo of those he blamed himself for. The dead he couldn’t let go of.

“Another hunter,” he replied.

“Did you–?” Her throat seized up as she pictured the blonde girl again. _Did you have a child with her?_ But no. Couldn’t be. He wouldn’t have kept that from her.

“No, we weren’t together,” he said. “Not at all. Family friend. Ambitious kid. Died on my watch.”

This was always his story. Maybe it was true. But if it was, why would Lucifer tell Caleb to find her doppelganger? Buffy wouldn’t ask again. After all, she had her own secrets to keep.

They had recently discovered that Caleb was holed up in an old monastery turned winery on the edge of town. With its thick walls and narrow windows, it was the perfect place for hiding Bringers and vampires. But they’d been slashing and staking Caleb’s minions for weeks. How many could be left?

Buffy knew the Potentials weren’t ready. They’d gotten pretty good, but there would be casualties. But if they, the Chosen and Near-Chosen, did nothing, more people would die anyway. Innocent people.

She couldn’t sit around while Caleb was still alive.

* * *

 

It was morning when Buffy and her rag tag army – Potentials, hunters, a Watcher, a witch, a construction worker, an ex-demon, an ex-vampire, an unemployed principal, and Buffy’s baby sister – descended on the winery. The front doors were already open – waiting. It was dark inside, and she suddenly thought of those deep sea fish with dead eyes and nightmare teeth that lured smaller fish into their mouths with a small, bobbing light. She felt like a small fish.

Willow and Ella quickly began setting up a field to keep any demon reinforcements from joining the fray. Everyone watched the two redheads work. Some muttered prayers as they mentally counted down the seconds until they’d enter Caleb’s lair.

 _Cas, now would be a great time to make an appearance,_ Buffy offered the air before steeling her nerves.

Buffy entered first. The Potentials followed her closely. Racks of massive wine barrels – one rack straight down the middle – forced them to split up. Buffy motioned to the shotgun-toting Winchesters to each take a side.

Her crew divided, squeezed in a narrow space, with objects to hide behind at every turn. Her brain screamed _Trap!_ But another night at home meant more bodies in the morning.

A high pitched _wzzzz!_ Bianka dropped her crossbow, smacking her bloody neck and the small knife buried inside. As she fell, a gunshot rang out.

“Bringers!” Dean shouted.

The room exploded in a whirl of fangs and blades, flying bolts, vampire dust, and blood splatter. With one swift blow, Buffy decapitated two vampires. A bolt whizzed over her head, nailing a third.

Two cries peeled from the back of the room. Vampires had circled behind them and were preparing to feast on Ju and Nitika cowering by the door.

“Grace! Sophia! Spike! Cover the front!” Buffy commanded as she swung up on the racks, cutting her way through Bringers on her way to the back of the group.

With a swift kick, she knocked three barrels off the stack, their _BOOM_ startling the vampires into letting the girls go. She kicked another barrel, pinning a vamp. Ju, bloody and furious, staked the trapped one. Buffy killed the other. Ju shook Nitika, and the girl slumped, lifeless.

“Get moving!” Buffy barked. She scurried to the top of the dividing row and found a Bringer. She waited as he whirled and flared his blades, watching the rhythm, and gutted him when he bared his stomach mid-display.

Below, on the other side, Dean shielded Maya, her face covered in blood. He put a bullet in a Bringer’s skull.

Sam had switched to an ax, and he and Betje worked through the crowd of vampires with berserker fury.

In the back, one vampire had Mio’s arms pinned behind her while the other went in for a bite. The girl headbutted him and kicked the biter back. Before Buffy could jump into the fray, Xander and Dawn swept in and helped Mio kill both vampires.

Buffy ran down the stack of barrels and leapt off at the front of the room where Caleb stood smirking at the bloodshed. Next to him stood Buffy’s mother.

“You know,” said her Not-Mother in a disapproving tone, “had I arrived in any other town, met any demon before I met Spike, I wouldn’t have cared about you at all. After all, what can one girl do against the onslaught of Hell? You’re not that special, my dear.”

“Did you run out of fingers to count on, Lucifer?” Buffy retorted over the clatter of weapons.

The Potentials started to break free from the confines of the aisle. They flooded the open space at the back of the building, cutting down everything in their path.

Buffy’s mother morphed into Angel. Buffy bit her tongue.

A scream rang out and was cut short. Buffy kept her eyes on Caleb.

The priest prowled towards her with an oily confidence. “The slut thinks she can win this.”

“She thinks Dean can win this.” The First corrected.

“Are we going to fight or patronize each other?” Buffy asked as she and Caleb slowly circled each other. “Because I am itching to break in these ass-kicking boots.” 

Again, Lucifer changed his visage, this time turning into a familiar blonde. She had a narrow chin and big brown eyes, long, shiny hair like Buffy’s. Jo. Her grey t-shirt was soaked in blood, her guts spilling out.

“This fight is a rerun of one the Winchesters already lost. It’s when Dean lost her,” Lucifer said, pointing to the face of the girl he was wearing. “You won’t die as quickly. You are familiar with the definition of insanity, aren’t you, Buffy?

“Slayer or not, your bodies are blood and bone. So fragile, oxygen rusts you out if you don’t kill yourself with fast food first. But you’re a blowfly compared to most humans. Buzzing. Stinging. Nagging.”

“Slappable,” added Caleb.

“Short lived.”

“Then I’ll get to the point,” Buffy said, plunging her sword through Caleb’s heart.

He did not fall. He did not bleed. He smiled, pleased, and pulled it out by the blade.

Buffy tried to sweep Caleb’s legs out from under him, but he was too fast, skipping over her with delight. “Weaponless and alone,” he scoffed. “But why would I kill you when I could, say, kill her?”

Two Bringers stepped forward with Grace pinned between them. She squirmed, stomped his feet and tried to headbutt him, but he slit her throat.

Buffy lunged at him. A crowd of Bringers blocked her path. She elbowed one in the face, snatching its blade and hacking through the monks.

Caleb sank deeper into the crowd.

 _I don’t want to kill you yet._ Jo’s voice twisted through Buffy’s head like whispers in a quiet room.

Dozens of vampires streamed in from grates in the floor. Some of the barrels popped open to reveal more Bringers. The girls were bloody, lagging. Someone screamed.

_I want you to watch. To suffer._

Caleb wrapped his hands around Vi’s head and snapped her neck.

_You’ll die in the end. Everyone Dean Winchester loves dies. He will abandon you as God abandoned me._

Buffy plunged a stake into a vampire as she worked her way back through the crowd. “Turn back!” she cried. “Get out!”

_Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t help you, of all people?_

Dawn was directing Potentials back toward the entrance when Caleb grabbed her by the throat.

Buffy’s heart stopped. She pushed through the crowd, now a writhing wall of blood and steel. Dawn kicked the priest. She couldn’t scream. Buffy pulled a short knife from a Bringer’s body and hurled it at Caleb. It sank into his neck, but he did not flinch. He smiled back at her through the throng of bodies and plunged his thumb into Dawn’s eye.

_You can’t protect anyone._

A muzzle flash and Caleb reeled back, one side of his face covered in buckshot. Sam wrapped his arm around Dawn and helped her toward the door.

Buffy dusted three more vampires blocking her path before jumping on top of the barrels again. A knot of girls was stuck at the end of the row. They were blocked by bodies and barrels. Buffy ran to the end of the row and shouted, “I’ll hold them off! You climb!” Sophia, twirling her double axes with deadly precision, refused to leave her side. They cut through one, two, five vampires while Shakti, Kate and Wook climbed to safety.

“Buffy? Buffy!” Dean shouted somewhere behind her.

She turned for a second – only a second – to answer him and in that second, Sophia screamed. A vampire had gotten ahold of her. She chopped off its hand, but two more grabbed her. Then three. A hoard dragged her back into the building. Then they began to feast.

Buffy couldn’t save her. Couldn’t save any of them. She ran out to the crowd of bloody Potentials, a few dead Bringers at their feet. Willow, Giles and the others were busy attending the injured and loading Robin’s school bus. “Is this everyone?” she asked Spike.

“Sophia?”

“Dead.”

“Then these are your survivors.”

“Fuck this!” shouted Dean, storming toward his car. Moments later, he returned with two gas cans. He splashed the fuel all over the base of the building and doors. He flicked his lighter and set the trap ablaze.

* * *

 

Buffy sat unblinking, staring at the wall of the hospital, seeing nothing. She was crusted with blood, none of it hers. All of it hers.

Dawn did not want to see her.

Bianka, Grace, Violet, Nitika, Leticia, and Sophia – all dead. Over half of the Potentials bleeding from knife wounds or bite marks. A few broken and dislocated bones. Kimberly was missing part of a finger. Rachel had taken a blade so deep to her leg, the bone showed.

Then there was Dawn. Dean, Xander and Giles had driven the more severely injured to the hospital. With only five nurses, one doctor, and a janitor working as an orderly, understaffed was an understatement. They said they wouldn’t leave town until everyone else did.

Buffy told them to leave tonight.

* * *

 

Xander and Giles were visiting Dawn, trying to calm her down, leaving Buffy and Dean alone for only the second time in weeks, the first being when they had buried the bodies the day before.

Dean couldn’t believe that she wanted to attack Caleb. “You think you can just waltz in there and stab stab, the big bad wolf is dead? That’s suicide! Caleb will eat these girls alive.”

“Then tell me your brilliant plan,” she had said coldly.

He didn’t have one. What he had were two dead bodies in his trunk – a child and a woman unfortunate enough to look like Jo Harvelle.

“If we don’t move soon, the girls will go after him on their own. Hell, Lara’s already tried! Besides, Caleb is just a man. A totally creepy serial killer, yes, but still human. And the only play we have right now is knocking down Lucifer’s lieutenants.”

Dean had considered the chasm between them, widening exponentially each day since Cloe’s suicide, and wondered if he could make the jump. “You’re gonna kill him? Kinda out of line with your code, isn’t it? Sure you’re ready for that?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m some up-and-coming new kid! We can’t wait this out!”

He would have gladly killed Caleb for her. “I wasn’t–”

“You have no idea what I’m going through right now!”

Didn’t he? For nearly a year, angels had been moving him through time, threatening the people he loved – hell – giving him advanced stomach cancer. “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy trying to keep Michael, God’s number one groupie, from crawlin’ up my ass to get a feel for what it’s like to be a fucking Girl Scout troop leader!”

He regretted the words as soon as they had left his lips, but she was already lost to him. He could see it in the tension in her body as she turned away from him, looking at her ruined city flashing by the Impala. As they fought their way into the winery, he kept wondering if those would be their last words. But now they were in the same quiet, dim room.

His voice was soft, pleading. “Dawn will be –”

“Don’t.” She didn’t even look at him.

“I was just –”

“You can’t make this better, Dean. You can’t fix this. People are dead. Dawn’s lost an eye. Anything you say will only make it worse.”

Dean understood. The last thing he’d ever wanted was to suck other people into this angelic pissing contest. And because of him, because he’d been selfish and stayed, Dawn had lost an eye. Because of him, the women he loved would lose more people she loved. As always, his love brought destruction.

* * *

 

The evening sun lit up the city at a sharp angle, twisting familiar shapes. Everything was bathed in light or shadow. There was no middle. As Giles drove the Summerses home, the stop lights and flickering neon of the businesses shut off.

Sunnydale was lost.

The moment they pulled up to the house, girls started streaming out the front door.

Buffy said in a tired, resigned voice, “Get back inside! Sunset is –” Someone shoved her and she fell to the driveway, tiny pebbles stinging her palms. Buffy looked up and saw Betje, her clothes covered in dried blood, her usually stoic face wild with rage.

“What the fuck was that?” Betje shouted.

“That was losing,” Buffy said, getting back up.

“That was slaughter! Why did we not burn the place to begin with? Maybe then Sophia would still be alive!”

“I’m sorry about your friend –”

“I do not want your pity. I fought with that girl across Europe trying to get to safety, and because of you, she is dead!” Betje spit in Buffy’s face.

Buffy slapped her, the blood on her palms smearing over Betje’s cheeks. Sophia’s death wasn’t her fault. _Was it?_ Betje lunged at her, her hands around Buffy’s throat as they tumbled on the lawn. Buffy kicked her off, sending her flying and knocking over several other girls.

Buffy felt arms around her stomach. Hands on her arms. Dean voice growling in her ear, “You are better than this.” She could have broken his and Sam’s hold easily, bloody noses as parting gifts, but she didn’t want to hurt him. That was part of the problem.

Some of the girls had circled around Betje, whispering and casting sharp glares Buffy’s way. Willow, Xander, Anya and Robin stayed on the porch looking relieved to not be involved. Dawn stood by the car; her one good eye fixated on the lawn as if considering whether or not it needed a mow. Giles looked annoyed.

Keisha stepped forward, her eyes only briefly resting on Buffy. Normally quietly confident, she’d never been so wary, so tentative in the months they’d known each other. “We were talking while you were at the hospital and –”

“You screwed up, Buffy!” blurted Dani, gleefully.

They could hate her all they wanted, but they were in over their heads if they thought they could do better. “What was your big play against Lucifer, huh, Dani? Wow me.”

“It is not about beating Lucifer. It is about staying alive,” said Betje. “Something you do not seem concerned with.”

“Not concerned?!” Buffy dug her nails into her bleeding palms to keep from slapping the girl again. “Do you think I let fifty girls into my home because I was lonely? Do you think this is summer camp? Staying alive is the entire reason you’re here!”

“And you can’t wait to get us out, can you?” sneered Kate. She had a black eye and split lip. “Always shoutin’ at us. Tellin’ us when to sleep an’ what to eat an’ where we can’t go. We’re only allowed to be safe if we stay lock step with you.” Several girls nodded in agreement.

“She hides in her room!” shouted a voice from the back.

“She disappeared for a whole day!” added another.

“It was not a good plan, Buffy. You know that.” Lara’s arm was in a makeshift sling.

Buffy did know. Dean and Sam had been unable to stop Lucifer. She could do nothing but knock off each second-in-command as they rose up. Her fingers were turning blue in the dyke.

“Bad plan or not, you weren’t even helping,” sniped Dani.

Buffy felt as if she’d been slapped. “You’re joking.”

“I saw you up on top a those barrels like you was ‘ _managing_ ,’” said Rona, using a nasally voice for managing. “Fightin’ off fuckin’ vampire on my own while fearless leader fails to lead.”

Buffy drew a sharp breath to respond, but Ju, her neck bandaged from the vampire bite jumped in first. “Nitika died crawling over the pile of rubble you made blocking the door.” Her face was pale and slick with tears. “She could have gotten out, waited for us to finish, but those barrels were blocking the path.”

“You say you’re saving us,” began Karen, “but if I hadn’t nailed that vampire with the crossbow, you’d be dead and one of us would be the Slayer.”

“That would be better,” said Dani, darkly.

“Whoa!” shouted Dean, getting between Buffy and the Potentials. “You talk a big game kid, but you’ve had your ass in class all this time. You ain’t got no idea what hell she’s going through.”

_Neither do you._

“Maybe not, but Faith Lehane does,” said Karen.

Buffy was stunned by the out-of-nowhere suggestion that she and Faith were on the same level. She would have laughed if she didn’t feel like crying.

“Who’s Faith?” asked Maya.

The gossip made Dani look like a child hopped up on candy. “She’s the _real_ Slayer. Buffy did die, after all.”

A murmur of surprise rippled through the girls, and Dean, who she’d never told about Faith, gaped at her in disbelief.

If they wanted to think she wasn’t the real deal, fine. “Sorry, but she’s in prison for murder. You brats are stuck with me.”

The girls exchanged knowing glances, some with tears, others with smirks. Keisha was pushed forward again.

“Buffy, I don’t know you, and you’re probably a different person without all this Lucifer stuff going on, but…we decided you have to go.”

“You’re kicking me out of my house?”

“It’s my house too,” said Dawn. “They’re right. You’re not yourself.”

Bile rose in her throat. _Her sister, too?_

Giles added, “Perhaps the stress is getting to you. You wouldn’t have made those mistakes even a few weeks ago.”

Even Giles. Giles who believed in her more than anyone else. Giles who she’d trusted with one of her most stressful experiences. He thought she was broken.

“You can’t be serious.” But she knew they were. “What, are you going to put Dani in charge?”

“No,” said Betje. “Dean.”

Dean’s face was a mixture of shock and indignation. “No, no, no. This ain’t my circus.”

“You set the building on fire!” Betje encouraged. “We should have done that in the first place.”

Buffy didn’t want to hear him defend her again. She didn’t need defending or a highlights reel of her failures. She needed sleep. While they argued, she sneaked into the house.

Throwing some clothes in a backpack, she uncovered a purple bag and three books, long forgotten Slayer gifts from Robin Wood. The same Robin Wood on her front lawn nodding along to the idea that she was a failure.

Maybe she was. Even so, she was the only Slayer there. She tossed the bag and books into her duffel and left out the backdoor.


End file.
